Just when you thought it had safely sunk below the waters of history, James Cameron's Titanic is due to be salvaged. Flushed with the success of Avatar, the director plans to raise his Oscar-laden 1997 blockbuster and launch it afresh. "We're looking at spring of 2012 for the release, which is the 100th anniversary of the sailing of the ship," Cameron told USA Today.

Titanic set box-office records with a global haul of $1.8bn, although it has since been overtaken by Avatar, which has notched up a grand total of $2.6bn (£1.7bn) after just three months on release. Now Cameron aims to return to the scene of his earlier triumph and re-issue the film as a 3D edition, via the magic of digital technology. "It's never going to look as good as if you shot it in 3D," he cautions. "But think of it as a sort of 2.8D."

It remains to be seen whether the re-issued Titanic will regain the crown it lost to Avatar. But the odds are not in its favour. Not content with re-releasing Titanic, Cameron is considering re-releasing Avatar as well, reasoning that there are still audiences who have yet to see his movie. "It's kind of gotten stomped out [of cinemas since the release] of Alice in Wonderland," he lamented. "The word we're getting back from exhibitors is we probably left a couple of hundred million dollars on the table as a result."

The director has tentative plans to re-issue Avatar this autumn, presumably to commemorate the 10-month anniversary of its initial release. "The question is [whether] the appetite is still going to be there after the summer glut of movies," he says. "We're going to assess that. We're talking about maybe adding in additional footage and doing something creative."